Introduction to Focus Issue: Design and Control of Self-Organization in Distributed Active Systems

2008 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 026101 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexander S. Mikhailov ◽  
Kenneth Showalter
2014 ◽  
Vol 25 (03) ◽  
pp. 521-564 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marco Caponigro ◽  
Massimo Fornasier ◽  
Benedetto Piccoli ◽  
Emmanuel Trélat

Starting with the seminal papers of Reynolds (1987), Vicsek et al. (1995), Cucker–Smale (2007), there has been a lot of recent works on models of self-alignment and consensus dynamics. Self-organization has so far been the main driving concept of this research direction. However, the evidence that in practice self-organization does not necessarily occur (for instance, the achievement of unanimous consensus in government decisions) leads to the natural question of whether it is possible to externally influence the dynamics in order to promote the formation of certain desired patterns. Once this fundamental question is posed, one is also faced with the issue of defining the best way of obtaining the result, seeking for the most "economical" way to achieve a certain outcome. Our paper precisely addressed the issue of finding the sparsest control strategy in order to lead us optimally towards a given outcome, in this case the achievement of a state where the group will be able by self-organization to reach an alignment consensus. As a consequence, we provide a mathematical justification to the general principle according to which "sparse is better": in order to achieve group consensus, a policy maker not allowed to predict future developments should decide to control with stronger action the fewest possible leaders rather than trying to act on more agents with minor strength. We then establish local and global sparse controllability properties to consensus. Finally, we analyze the sparsity of solutions of the finite time optimal control problem where the minimization criterion is a combination of the distance from consensus and of the ℓ1-norm of the control. Such an optimization models the situation where the policy maker is actually allowed to observe future developments. We show that the lacunarity of sparsity is related to the codimension of certain manifolds in the space of cotangent vectors.


Author(s):  
Ana Maria Di Grado Hessel ◽  
Ivani Catarina Arantes Fazenda

The scope of this Paper is to clarify the unfolding of Complex Thinking concerning the role of management, as a result of a research carried out in some Brazilian Governmental Schools, where the dialogical movements were understood in the whole context in which the linear and systemic aspects coexisted. The studies of the theory of Complexity are the bases of the reflections on the management action, enabling articulation toward the self-organization of the group. It is observed by many researchers that the action of the manager usually encompasses the role of a planner of the work, with rational use of the resources and articulation of the means to reach the targets of the institution, in addition to the role of coordination and control of people´s work. That has shown not to be enough to meet the challenges of the world nowadays. The processes of management may get different meanings: under a technicist conception, management is often centralized, decisions come from the top without participation of the other levels; under a more democratic conception, the process is more participative, and decision is collective. In this view, the manager is expected to promote collective work, encourage the participation of the different subjects of the team and institution community, establish co-responsibility and assure the construction and implementation of a proposal – a set of intentions – a collective agreement. To be able to do so, the manager should be prepared to perceive the team as a living system, able of self-organization, as well as the linear and systemic aspects in permanent balance.


10.12737/6079 ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 36-40
Author(s):  
Стародубцев ◽  
V. Starodubtsev ◽  
Фарафонов ◽  
A. Farafonov

Based on the theory of self-organization has developed an original method for identification of target functions students’ knowledge quality (SKQ) in the face of influencing factors uncertainty. The proposed system of external criteria for the models selection and control parameters allows to use the model for the effective management of the SKQ


1990 ◽  
Vol 112 (3) ◽  
pp. 448-455 ◽  
Author(s):  
D. Karnopp

Electronically controlled vibration isolation and control systems have recently reached at least the prototype phase in a number of fields of application. Of particular practical interest are semi-active systems which require very little actuator power. Semi-active dampers in the form of rapidly modulated hydraulic shock absorbers have been used for example in automobile suspensions to achieve some of the benefits of fully active servo-mechanism systems but with much reduced cost and complexity. Various damper configurations and feedback control schemes are discussed. The design choices to be made can often result in similar system performance and yet can lead to dramatic differences in the frequency response requirements for the actuators used in the semi-active dampers.


Author(s):  
Dongyang Bie ◽  
Yanhe Zhu ◽  
JiZhuang Fan ◽  
Xiaolu Wang ◽  
Yu Zhang ◽  
...  

Self-reconfiguration of Modular Self-Reconfigurable (MSR) robots is a fundamental primitive that can be used as part of higher-lever functionality. The biological principle of self-organizing and growth in both animals and plants is learned to solve the automatic planning of configuration and control methods. A bioinspired approach is proposed for distributed self-reconfiguration. This method aims at utilizing the self-organization and pattern emergence of the MSR robotic system, which is made of large quantity of modules to promote the system to reconfigure in the direction of adapting to environments and tasks. This mechanism is hybrid by combining Lindenmayer systems (L-systems) and Cellular Automata (CA). L-systems are introduced for defining global structure and providing topological description. Cellular Automata (CA) handle motion planning of distributed modules. This method is absolutely distributed and convergent to self-adaptive structures with desired organizing principles. The convergence of proposed method is verified through simulations and experiments on UBot robots.


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